This is a curated selection of Tenzin Palmo quotes (primarily sourced from publicly available videos, and personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Tenzin Palmo’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Religion & Spirituality Quotes
- Ignorance & Identification Quotes
- Thinking & Knowing Quotes
- Self-Inquiry & Direct Experience Quotes
- Duality & Nonduality Quotes
25 Tenzin Palmo Quotes on Identification, Ignorance, Inquiry, & More
Tenzin Palmo Quotes on Religion & Spirituality
“It is agreed throughout all traditions that we need to become more conscious of our mind.” — Tenzin Palmo
“It’s a very sad reflection that religion and the spiritual path—which should be something which opens us all up to our true human potential for wisdom and compassion—has often been the very vehicle which adds more to prejudice and to suppression.” — Tenzin Palmo
“Buddhists always talk about impermanence and change, but like everybody else they don’t like to change at all.” — Tenzin Palmo
“God is inside, it’s not something out sitting in the sky pulling the strings. You have to rediscover your own inner spark of the divine.” — Tenzin Palmo
“Your lives are your Dharma practice. It’s very important to recognize that your lives are not an obstacle to your practice—they are the practice.” — Tenzin Palmo
Tenzin Palmo Quotes on Ignorance & Identification
“Our problem is that we believe it all. We think this is really true and exactly how it is—and it isn’t. We are deluded. This is our fundamental ignorance speaking to us, and this is why we suffer. We suffer because we believe it.” — Tenzin Palmo
“Ignorance is the lack of understanding the true nature of how things really are—not only our appearing outer reality but in particular our false identification. The root of the problem is that we identify with all the wrong things—that we identify with our thinking, conceptual mind, and we don’t realize our true nature.” — Tenzin Palmo
“The problem is not thoughts. The problem is not emotions. The problem is not feelings. That’s the nature of the mind to have thoughts, and feelings, and emotions. The problem is that we identify with that. We think this is ‘me’—this is who I am. And therefore we suffer. If we didn’t identify, there would be no problem. They’re just passing thoughts, passing feelings—let them go … Everything which comes into our mind, if we recognize it in the moment that it arises, if we accept it, we can then just let it go.” — Tenzin Palmo
“The main problem for us are the afflictive or negative emotions that lie within our mindstream—that is our greed and grasping. Our attachment is a big problem for us because it makes us grasp, and cling, and fear loss … The problem is always our attachment and grasping.” — Tenzin Palmo
“We tend to solidify everything and want things to stay how they are. People to stay how they are, everything to stay—if it is pleasant for us at least—forever. And, of course, everything is changing, everything is impermanent.” — Tenzin Palmo
Tenzin Palmo Quotes on Thinking & Knowing
“Every moment, we are actually right there. But, we don’t know it. We don’t know that we know.” — Tenzin Palmo
“There’s a very big difference between thinking and knowing you are thinking.” — Tenzin Palmo
“There is a world of difference between knowing and knowing about.” — Tenzin Palmo
“We cannot know anything at all, either outside or inside, except through the mind … We only know by what is directed to us through our sense organs.“ — Tenzin Palmo
“Wherever we go, we take our minds with us. We are never separated from our mind … Whatever we do, wherever we go, whatever practices we undertake, we can only do it and experience it through the mind … What is really important is to know the mind itself.” — Tenzin Palmo
Tenzin Palmo Quotes on Self-Inquiry & Direct Experience
“The theory of ‘no self’, the theory of emptiness, doesn’t help at all unless it is not just a theory but actually an experience.” — Tenzin Palmo
“We play our role, and we play it the best we can because this is the role we are given to play in this lifetime, but essentially we know we are not that … When one is in solitude, especially when one is looking inside, then it gives a chance for all these various identifications to be peeled away—because why bother to play roles to oneself?” — Tenzin Palmo
“If we understand about our own mind that we are constantly, moment to moment to moment, projecting this whole display, then we can enjoy it—we can cry at the sad parts and laugh at the good parts—but we don’t at a very essential level take it too seriously.” — Tenzin Palmo
“In the mind, you’re surfing—in that you’re really riding the thoughts and the feelings. You’re not immersed in them—you’re on top of them or behind them.” — Tenzin Palmo
“The ultimate question: ‘Who thinks?’ We say, ‘I think’. Who is I? … Everything we do is from this ‘I’—I think, I like, I don’t like, I’m afraid, I’m a good person, I’m a bad person, I’m depressed, I had a terrible childhood, I had a wonderful childhood. Who is I?” — Tenzin Palmo
Tenzin Palmo Quotes on Duality & Nonduality
“Our ordinary conceptual thinking always has a subject and an object—it’s dualistic. But, in the nature of the mind, it transcends that dualistic split, and so there is a tremendous sense of interconnection—not only with all humans but with all beings and with all nature. There is that recognition that there are no boundaries—that actually we all partake together of this primordial consciousness.” — Tenzin Palmo
“From an experiential point of view, there are two aspects to the mind. There is the known—there are the thoughts, memories, anticipations, daydreams, all the thinking, the emotions, happiness, sadness, jealousy, greed, joy, love, hatred … And there is the knower—there is that aspect of the mind which knows but which is not involved. Some people call it the observer, the witness, or the awareness.” — Tenzin Palmo
“The knower seems as if it is behind all these thoughts and feelings and emotions. Just this quiet, totally conscious and aware, absolutely vivid, and pristine, and naked awareness … This knowing is very bare, it’s very naked, because it doesn’t have any opinions. It doesn’t like, or dislike, or judge. It just sees.” — Tenzin Palmo
“The mind basically is that which is known and that which knows. And the whole point is simply to dwell with that which knows. Start identifying with that which knows and stop identifying with the known.” — Tenzin Palmo
“The transformed mind has the opportunity to transcend the ordinary, conceptual, dualistic, egotistic level of our consciousness … There is this level of pure consciousness which interconnects us because it’s not dualistic—instead of separating us as our dualistic mind does.” — Tenzin Palmo
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